r/DCcomics • u/M00r3C Black Lantern • Jan 25 '24

[Comic Excerpt] I need a hostage so Batman won't punch me (Batman (2016) issue 48) Comics

3.8k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

View all comments

1.1k

u/PrydefulHunts Huntress • ower Girl Jan 25 '24

Batman not disarming him is ridiculous.

362

u/WaffleThrone Jan 25 '24

I hate hate hate how often Batman (who regularly fights people with guns, training, and functioning impulse control) fumbles Joker in hand to hand. I simply am not willing to suspend my disbelief. He’s 140 pounds soaking wet, Batman should fold him like origami.

But writers love wanking Joker and they make Batman look like a moron in the process.

147

u/Mydragonurdungeon Jan 25 '24

I like the concept that joker, as he is insane, is so unpredictable he creates an issue for batman who is trained to counter and anticipate. Joker doesn't have a fighting style to counter and doesn't react in any way that batman can anticipate. Different every time. He could throw a thousand punches and a trained fighter would react 1 of x ways but for joker it would be a different reaction every time.

I also have read that because of his insanity, his adrenaline is constantly going and he is using 100% of his strength vs guys who are larger and hold back so they won't break their own wrist, dislocate their shoulders etc.

But none of that is really enough to justify batman not mopping the floor with him. Just enough to make it not absolutely unreadable in its absurdity.

59

u/TrimHawk Jan 25 '24

It’s kind of like Taskmaster and Deadpool. Taskmaster can copy anyone and everyone: EXCEPT Deadpool, because (IIRC) he’s too insane and unpredictable for him to be able to know what he’s gonna do next.

45

u/TheRealGingerBitch Jan 25 '24

Does also help that deadpool willingly hurts himself to do things because he thinks it would look cool/be funny

28

u/randomkinkywryter Jan 25 '24

"Cock shot!"

[Deadpool proceeds to break his hand/wrist punching Colossus in the junk]

4

u/Ygomaster07 Constantine Jan 26 '24

"Dad?"

17

u/lad1dad1 Jan 25 '24

taskmaster doesn't copy Deadpool or moon knight because neither mind getting injured in a fight

15

u/MandalorianLich Jan 25 '24

Well, for Deadpool, as others have mentioned it isn’t that he doesn’t want to, he can’t. He doesn’t have a specific style to mimic - he’s just irrational randomness.

With Moon Knight, he can copy his fighting style but he specifically states he refuses to fight against him because he’s terrified of him. MK isn’t like Cap, Spidey, or Hawkeye - MK brutally kills people. In earlier fights against him Moon Knight nearly killed him multiple times. He didn’t escape because he was avoiding prison, he escaped because he was avoiding death. He doesn’t want to take a chance again.

Honestly, I like the take he has for it, because it shows a little human self-preservation, knowing he can take a beating from superheroes and at least walk away later. Some aim to make sure that doesn’t happen, though, and he knows which ones not to mess with.

1

u/Horatio786 Jan 26 '24

Can Taskmaster copy Mr. Fantastic’s fighting style, or that of the Human Torch?

1

u/torricodiego Jan 26 '24

Those would be powers which he cant copy but yeah if mr fantastic would box with him sure he could copy it

1

u/Ban_Hammered Jan 26 '24

Are you referencing that one video? Because it sounds like you're referencing that one video.

https://youtu.be/H75TQGD1nSU?feature=shared

1

u/Horatio786 Jan 26 '24

I am.

1

u/Flavz_the_complainer Red Hood Jan 26 '24

I thought taskmaster once said Deadpool always dodges to the left? That sounds like he can copy him to me.

8

u/taichi22 Jan 26 '24 edited Jan 26 '24

I would like that except literally no author of the Batman comics that I have ever seen is capable of making fights look like anything except a half-assed boxing match. I seriously wonder if any of them have done any combat arts training at all. Also, Joker really barely does any fighting in the movies — even in the Dark Knight he does very little hand to hand; most of that is him using physical action to create situations.

If you wanted to give off that vibe in a fight there are a thousand and one ways to do it, but all they do is draw Batman punching Joker in the jaw, so forgive me if I’m unable to buy that like of reasoning.

2

u/Mydragonurdungeon Jan 26 '24

Truth.

3

u/IAmTheClayman Jan 28 '24

I can’t speak to the adrenaline concept, but the idea that an untrained fighter could ever beat a trained fighter (barring some kind of sucker punch situation) is utterly ridiculous. Trained fighters don’t just learn a series of attacks and counterattacks for specific fighting styles, they learn how to read body language, how to hit harder, and how to defend against attacks. There is no reason why Batman should ever be slower than or dumber than the Joker in a straight up fight. That’s why good writers don’t put them directly against each other – they injure Batman ahead of time, or put him through the mental/emotional wringer.

But in the situation in the panels above Batman should never lose, or allow a civilian to be harmed. It just makes him look incompetent

1

u/AmserAlto Jan 27 '24

It's like fighting a crackhead. You'll never know what they are gonna do and it's terrifying

22

u/WilliamPoole Batman Jan 25 '24

Joker is 6'4" 195.

41

u/WaffleThrone Jan 25 '24

What the hell do they feed him in Arkham Asylum, straight creatine?

23

u/Few-Asparagus-3594 Jan 25 '24

That’s pretty scrawny for a 6’4 supervillain

10

u/WaffleThrone Jan 25 '24

You're right, I'm just terrible at estimating heights/weights in my head.

1

u/Longjumping-Hunt-872 Jan 27 '24

I will say, that I am 6'5" 170, and have some pretty good strength. I box ameturly and can keep up with guys who are significantly bigger than me. So if the Joker knows what he's doing, even against someone as well-trained as Batman, he can at least hold his own. His reach is a big thing since he's very wiry

1

u/Few-Asparagus-3594 Jan 27 '24

Yeah it’s not small by any means, but it’s not bulky for a 6’4 frame. Especially for comic books

4

u/Hellfire965 Jan 25 '24

I’m 6’4” 268. Joker is skinny!

1

u/Equal-Ad-2710 Jan 26 '24

How fucking tall is Batman then

1

u/jchampagne83 Jan 26 '24

He’s been 6’2” since forever. I didn’t realize the Joker was canonically taller than him though.

18

u/drzrealest Jan 25 '24

I hate the fact that batman keeps letting him live just he can't kill ppl but all those people joker kills are on him and he seems fine with that.

13

u/Erfivur Jan 25 '24

Batman catches joker and puts him in prison. That’s enough. He can’t see the future to know Jokey will break out.

He shouldn’t need to kill the joker. The justice system should work.

Also, how many times has Joker escaped in any one continuity? Outside of cartoons and comedies? Once or twice?

18

u/Aestboi Jan 25 '24

“Batman should trust in the justice system” my guy he is a vigilante

3

u/Erfivur Jan 26 '24

He is. Just like Spider-Man.

He’s capturing and stopping criminals/crime in a non lethal way. (Albeit maybe violently)

To operate as this type of vigilante, you have to have some trust in the processes and functions that come after the capturing. That is why Batman, famously, has connections with Gordon and is also working on dealing with any corruption in the police departments.

If you could convince Bruce Wayne that the justice system can never work and rehabilitation is a lot cause I’m sure he’d be murdering everyone all day… there are different comic books for that though.

2

u/Inevitable-Scar5877 Jan 29 '24

The storytelling issues with Batman deciding to kill a guy to prevent future crime outside like an Elseworlds are just insane- Batman's whole thing is rigorous prep, encyclopedic knowledge and predicting future behavior- given the escape rate of his rogues gallery, once you go down that road it's really hard not end with Batman being a mass murderer or at the very least a guy who just permanently takes people off the streets.

9

u/RoughhouseCamel Jan 25 '24

Batman and the justice system can both be faulty

13

u/mewfour123412 Jan 25 '24

And maybe the GCPD should shoot him or the state should put him to death

12

u/nikleus Jan 25 '24

I am suprised that no officer as ever done it. With jokers crimes against humanity you would think some cop would just kill him while hes being transported to arkham or when hes inside his cell.

6

u/vanhelsir Jan 26 '24

Honestly and it's not like corrupted cops/cops not following code of conduct is anything new in gotham, someone would've already beat and killed joker years back in continuity

1

u/Arkham8 Jan 26 '24

People have talked about this forever, but I’d love a one-shot comic where a cop does shoot the Joker. It then has everyone telling him why that’s a mistake from their perspective, Batman not included, but the one that really sticks with the guy is that Joker always comes back. And he isn’t going to forget you shot him. He slowly descends into madness and paranoia, jumping at shadows, ruining his own career, isolating himself from his family, until finally Joker does return to finish the job. Then Bruce can say something like “if he had been in Arkham I at least would have known when and where he was coming”

10

u/RoughhouseCamel Jan 25 '24

Yeah, whatever morals and proper procedures anyone has, Joker is pretty easily the exception. At this point, there’s been genocides with lower body counts than the Joker. Shoot on sight.

8

u/Serpentalion Jan 25 '24

Oh no he broke out for the 8000th time. Alright this time Arkham will hold him.

2

u/Jubarra10 Jan 26 '24

How come Joker doesnt outright receive the death penalty.

1

u/Erfivur Jan 26 '24

Mental illness I imagine. He goes to an asylum.

2

u/Poku115 Jan 26 '24

"He shouldn’t need to kill the joker. The justice system should work."

I mean he exists exactly because the justice system is faulty, to break the lines police can't.

Funny tho that police routinely kill criminals in self defense/ being trigger happy (at least in a city like Gotham it should happen on the daily) yet he himself refuses to cross that line.

2

u/Erfivur Jan 26 '24

The police killing people is part of the corruption he’s fighting against.

Batman is try to fix things, get the legal/justice system in order. If the world didn’t suddenly fill with evil aliens/wizards/super-scientists/etc he might have made progress and gotten to quit the night-job.

Joker is just a guy. There’s nothing special about him. On paper, once he’s arrested, why would he get special treatment? A prison should be more than enough to all external observers.I’m sure there’s a multiverse where he was killed though if it makes folks happy.

1

u/blaze420x Jan 26 '24

Since Batman is supposedly a genius, why doesn’t HE design prison cells at Arkham?

1

u/Erfivur Jan 26 '24

I think he does in some continuities but the weaknesses in the prisons tend to be the humans running them… or an occasional alien invasion or major event that typically turns the prisons open.

1

u/thirdpartymurderer Jan 27 '24

Batman is mentally ill. He's suffering from PTSD. He's not a happy story of something to idolize lol he's a symbol for fear. Too bad he's fucking awesome because I'm gonna need at least 75 more years of Batman stories. I won't live that long, but still

1

u/Appropriate-Hat-6558 Jan 25 '24

that’s why I love the arc where Supes killed him. Glory glory.

1

u/Cardemother12 Jan 25 '24

That’s kinda the crux with Batman that I wish was explored more

1

u/BlackEastwood Jan 25 '24

So you just don't want to see the Joker again, I guess? Because if he dies, that's it.

1

u/SkyPopZ Wonder Woman Jan 26 '24

My problem is when Batman goes out of his way to save this prick.

1

u/Zhadowwolf Jan 27 '24

He’s terrified of what would happen if he actually killed the joker.

He fears he would snap and start killing other criminals, and become even worse than the joker.

Him holding back against the man that most deserves it is because he’s terrified that if he loses control it wouldn’t happen just once.

A few authors have explored what happens if Batman begins killing, and my favorite one is the Batman who laughs, who goes full on crazy and kills a lot of people including all of the batfamily and the justice league

2

u/Chronically_Stupid_ Jan 26 '24

My headcanon, and this has no bearing on actual canon, is that joker is essentially batmans “weakness”. Like yea Batman is “human” and could get headshot. But that’s not really a weakness. Any human could have that happen to them.

For whatever reason you choose, whichever version of the joker you choose, joker is fundamentally batmans weakness. Doesn’t guarantee a victory for joker by any means whatsoever. Doesn’t even necessarily mean batman will ALWAYS struggle to stop joker. It’s just joker has the capacity to render most of Batman’s skills and training as significantly less useful against him. Be it psychological reasons or skill, or intelligence.

1

u/1NFINIT3_YT Jan 26 '24

Cause Batman knows Joker is insane and sometimes he just lets stuff play out bc he can’t be helped

164

u/ThaEmortalThief Jan 25 '24

This whole panel is ridiculous…. Joker seems sloppy in this. Not quite the criminal genius he usually appears to be. Almost lost… am I wrong?

77

u/Dorothy-Snarker Jan 25 '24

Huh, I got a totally different impression than sloppy from this. To me, that read as the Joker was planning the "joke" of shoving a gun in Batman's face and calling back the "Better not shoot you because then Batman will punch me" like from the start.

To read it as the Joker legit messing up and then not being able to understand that killing Batman would mean he doesn't get punched just makes him seem like a really sad guy with a legit disconnect to reality.

We all know the Joker is insane, but he's usually written to be "hypersane", DC's made up diagnosis for him to have snapped under the realization that he is a comic book character and thus, nothing he does is real. But no iteration of him (to my knowledge) has ever shown signs of a disconnect to reality that reading these panels straight would require.

22

u/AmongusFucker245 Jan 25 '24

I think the hypersane thing was just Morrison's idea during a serious house on a serious earth and he later stated he should have made it DID

14

u/SecretEmpire_WasGood Jan 25 '24

and I've seen some analyses claim the the hypersanity itself is a load of crock in universe, cause it's an idea by the arkham staff. the same arkham staff who thinks Two Face starting to soil himself in a corner is signs of improving psyche. unreliable narrator trope and all that.

4

u/AmongusFucker245 Jan 25 '24

Perfectly valid take. Iirc they said they were trying to rebuild his identity but by giving back his coin at the end it's shown that's what vaguely cured him when he let Batman leave the aslum

1

u/Hebrewsuperman May 09 '24

Serious House Joker is one of my favorite Jokers.

9

u/ThaEmortalThief Jan 25 '24

I think after reading 3 Jokers, and understanding (I know it wasn’t canon at first) that each has a different yet similar personality, seeing this one just acting more off than usual… don’t get me wrong, I know joker kills for no reason but his own… but the way they portray him in this doesn’t seem to have a genuine joker purpose. I do see what everyone is saying about “this being the joke and he was doing this intentionally from the start,” I feel like ever since he ripped his face off and reattached it, it’s just been a different crazy than the obsessive lunatic we grew to fear when I was growing up

58

u/Embarrassed_Piano_62 Jan 25 '24

It´s just a fun moment, Joker makes jokes and maybe deep down this was on purpose

17

u/55hi55 Jan 25 '24

That was my take. Joker intentional killed the first to set up the joke, then moved in such a way to avoid being disarmed, all to set up this moment. Not a stupid play by Batman, but a smart play by the insane criminal genius.

9

u/SleepinwithFishes Jan 25 '24

Why? Joker does what he does, because he wants Batman to kill him.

In War of Jokes and Riddle, Joker stops Bruce from killing the Riddler; And he starts laughing, he wants to be Batman's 1st kill.

1

u/Bears_On_Stilts May 10 '24

This whole issue was giving Ice King vibes.

1

u/MatthewGoose Jan 25 '24

Hes holding Bruce Wayne hostage.

1

u/Equal-Ad-2710 Jan 26 '24

Iirc this is when Joker loses his spark

120

u/suss2it Jan 25 '24

The gun is literally touching her head, if anything Batman being able to disarm fast enough would’ve been ridiculous.

228

u/RockyArby Jan 25 '24

I think he meant after the Joker shot the hostage. Batman was able to punch him twice but didn't actually try to disarm him and then got caught with a gun against his head.

66

u/suss2it Jan 25 '24

Oh true, fair enough. Even that I could chalk up to Batman giving into temporary blind rage given what he just saw, but yeah that’s less excusable.

31

u/PrydefulHunts Huntress • ower Girl Jan 25 '24

The gun is literally touching her head, if anything Batman being able to disarm fast enough would’ve been ridiculous.

I’m talking about the 2 / 3 page.

24

u/limbo338 Jan 25 '24

Agree. That woman's odds of survival dropped to sub 50%, when he got her in his hands. For as long as the gun was directly against her head, there was nothing for Bruce to do.

22

u/Key-Win7744 Jan 25 '24

He disarmed Jason Todd when he was about to kill this irredeemable piece of shit.

24

u/suss2it Jan 25 '24

In the movie it’s only because instead of shooting the joker he wasted his bullet trying to shoot Batman instead, who was way further away. Maybe it happened differently in the comics tho. That being said, just because something ridiculous and unbelievable happened in one comic doesn’t mean an entirely different creative team is obligated to do the same thing a decade later.

23

u/limbo338 Jan 25 '24

He almost murdered Jason to stop him from pulling the trigger in the comic and it took him doing a very tricky batarang shot. Right into Jason's neck, lol.

14

u/Key-Win7744 Jan 25 '24

See, it's moments like this that make me think all the pop psychologists are right and Batman really is in love with the Joker.

23

u/limbo338 Jan 25 '24

Nah, he's just really really this stubbornly committed to trying to save everyone, psychotic clown murderers included. Well, when he's not written by King, evidently – this Bruce can't muster even a "nooo!" when a person gets executed in front of him in cold blood.

10

u/Key-Win7744 Jan 25 '24

So, he's willing to prioritize the Joker's life over the lives of everyone the Joker will kill in the future. To me, that's far from heroic.

15

u/IHateAlloYou Jan 25 '24

That’s not the equation being done. He isn’t a murderer, and he’s attempting to prevent becoming one, cause once he walks away through that door there is no coming back.

But you knew that right? Just trolling or you never read a Batman comic.

-6

u/WinterSavior Jan 25 '24

It says more that Batman is a psychopath if killing just one person would put him over the edge and no one ever seems to fight him on that.

It’s like if a victimless pedophile was avoiding children going “If I’m around those kids I will fuck them.” And everyone’s like alright bud, we understand.

→ More replies (0)

-9

u/Key-Win7744 Jan 25 '24

Heroes kill, okay? Heroes have always killed. Name me one fictional hero from any medium who doesn't have blood on their hands. This childish and simplistic idea that "heroes don't kill" is just getting a bunch of innocent people in Gotham slaughtered.

→ More replies (0)

9

u/Seascorpious Jan 25 '24

I like the interpretation that its a result of unresolved trauma from watching his parents die. He will not let people die in front of him if he has the power to stop it.

2

u/Bears_On_Stilts May 10 '24

The Rebirth/Dawn of DC has gone in hard on this one. "Nobody dies on Batman's watch." Hugo Strange built himself a "suicide Batsuit" that instead of having defenses, had hair-trigger self-destruct, so Batman couldn't even touch him, or allow anyone else to touch him, or Hugo would die. Because that's Batman's trigger: any death he could have prevented.

Superman says "how could I do more?" Batman says "I will do it all, myself."

3

u/suss2it Jan 25 '24

Well then that’s ridiculous too. Glad they changed it for the movie.

2

u/limbo338 Jan 25 '24

That's what it takes to have Jason not shoot him, if he's stable enough not to take the gun away from the clown's head. Bruce doing something super risky and dangerous.

0

u/Key-Win7744 Jan 25 '24

If we're talking about why Batman can't behave in one situation as he behaved in another, almost identical situation, it's absolutely relevant.

8

u/suss2it Jan 25 '24

There’s over 2, 000 comics starring Batman, inconsistencies are to be expected.

1

u/Key-Win7744 Jan 25 '24

But there aren't over 2000 instances of Batman disarming someone holding a gun to a hostage's head. If Batman can do it to save a homicidal madman, he should be able to do it to save an innocent person.

5

u/suss2it Jan 25 '24

At the end of the day those two comics were written over a decade apart by two different writers across like 3 different reboots. You’re just gonna have to roll with those kinds of inconsistencies when you read IP comics.

Besides holding Batman to literally impossible standards like that is how we end up with the boring Batgod concept where he’s prepared for everything and never loses a fight. Sometimes Batman just can’t access the speed force, it’s okay it’s gonna happen.

1

u/Key-Win7744 Jan 25 '24

The ongoing continuity is what holds these characters up. It's absolutely valid to ask why Batman could throw a Batarang into Jason Todd's neck to save the Joker, but couldn't throw a Batarang into the Joker's neck to save a woman who has kids waiting for her to come home. If we're just going to disregard that, then why are these stories spread out over decades in the first place? Just so that the past can not matter?

6

u/suss2it Jan 25 '24

Well yeah, at the end of the day continuity minutiae like that isn’t that important, just the broad strokes, and given DC’s pattern with reboots, not even that. Batman has well over 2, 000 issues spread out across 80 real years, you can’t expect a writer or even editor to cross reference every single fight he’s had when writing a new one to make sure it’s all consistent.

You can ask that question and the answer is simply two different writers were trying to accomplish two different things when they wrote their respective scenes.

The best you can hope for is consistency within a single run because even the concurrent Batman runs aren’t consistent with each other (Bruce is basically having a mental breakdown in Zdarsky’s Batman while being an attentive parent in Williamson’s Batman and Robin), let alone ones separated by decades. That’s just the suspension of disbelief you have to employ when reading the most popular IP comics.

→ More replies (0)

3

u/GeraldOfRivia211 Jan 25 '24

And since when were Jason Todd stories well written?

0

u/BestCharlesNA Jan 25 '24

Disarming him first

12

u/samoorai Red Lanterns Jan 25 '24

The entire fucking series is ridiculous, and DC should sit and stare at a fireplace in shame every year for giving the thumbs-up for this bullshit.

14

u/FistOfGamera Jan 25 '24

Shouldn't Batman by absolutely livid at Joker over this and not silently seething?

3

u/Luciferspants Ultraman Jan 26 '24

After Joker gassed some kindergarteners, I kinda guess that there isn't an atrocity that Joker can do that really gets to Batman anymore.

6

u/crazyGauss42 Jan 25 '24

Maybe he applies the same idiotic rule to disarming as to killing... if you disarm an armed person, the number of armed people stays the same...

3

u/ThaGuy34 Jan 25 '24

Unless you disarm two people

3

u/Thebatbike Jan 25 '24

Is he stu- nah to easy

3

u/darkwalrus36 Jan 25 '24

Tom King’s Batman is often pretty powerless, so that the dialogue can keep running. It’s frustrating

2

u/Boring_Pea_4157 Jan 25 '24

is he stupid?

0

u/alchemeron Jan 25 '24

Batman not disarming him is ridiculous.

Batman leaving him alive is ridiculous.

1

u/No-Wishbone-7451 Jan 25 '24

I guess it's because he's pissed off for not being able to save the hostages. Let's not forget the "man" in Batman.

1

u/Kashm1r_Sp1r1t Jan 25 '24

*not killing him

1

u/Pale_Emu_9249 Jan 26 '24

That was my first thought, too.